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Sorry dude, I couldn't help myself there...
Had to try to get one over on you. ;) :D
Seriously now, it sounds like an interesting read & I believe I've seen the almanac of which you speak in shops & stores & browsed through it on occasion. If it's the one I'm thinking of, you've got a good comprehensive tome there that should provide for a lot of interesting reading.
So, do you train in any particular discipline or are you using the almanac as a tool in which to choose arts to perhaps study someday?
Me?
I'm an old codger who first developed an interest in the martial arts as a kid along with the rest of the country during the "Kung Fu craze" of the mid 1970's when Bruce Lee movies were all the rage & KUNG FU was popular on television.
Actually though, if I'm honest, I was ahead of the times a bit because I first REALLY became interested after seeing a film called BILLY JACK in the early 70's, a year or two before the wave of chinese films hit these shores.
BILLY JACK's star Tom Laughlin was a Hapkido practisioner in real life & used it extensively in the film. Of course I didn't know what the heck I was watching him do onscreen, but I knew I liked it!
Being only 10 or 11 years old at the time though, there was no way for me to follow up on that interest.
Until a couple years later when the Bruce Lee movies came out & suddenly everyone knew what Kung Fu & Karate were.
At 13 or 14 I convinsed my parents to sign me up for lesons & a lifelong involvement began in the fighting arts. It took me a long round about way to get where I'm at today though.
I struggled during those early years as I just couldn't remain interested in any a discipline for very long. I went from school to school & trained on & off in Okinawan Karate-Do, Tae Kwon Do & even Judo. But nothing really clicked with me.
I got to yellow belt a couple of times & then just got bored. I couldn't stand any sort of katas or forms & point sparring wasn't really much more interesting to me. So I drifted away...
Until I became interested in boxing.
I began training in boxing the day after my 17th birthday & right away I knew I'd found my true calling.
I trained & fought out of Buffalo, New York for the next couple of years, but then switched to a gym that was closer to where I lived at the time outside of Niagara Falls. And, this new gym was also a kickboxing gym as well as a boxing gym. Which got me into doing some crosstraining & down the line rekindled my interest in other forms of martial arts & combatives.
Over the next several years, while I continued to box, I trained for a black belt in kickboxing & then, studied a form of Hawaiian Kenpo which was developed by my training partner & instructor Mark McIntyre into a hybrid combative called Dragonfist Kenpo. Which I eventually became a blackbelt in as well.
Anyhow, that's my rather long & drawn out story about the martial arts ( or combatives as I now prefer to refer to them as ), what's yours?
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